


going sane in a crazy world

by puertoricansuperman (orphan_account)



Category: The Tick (TV 1994), The Tick (TV 2017), The Tick - All Media Types
Genre: Character Study, Gen, I think?, Multiverse Theory, alternate universe - freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-07
Updated: 2019-05-13
Packaged: 2020-02-27 20:58:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18746989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/puertoricansuperman
Summary: "I had this weird dream last night," Arthur says. "I was at my old accounting job..." He trails off, but Dot is looking at him with something like concern. He doesn't want her to worry. He's never wanted her to worry about him. "It was the day I got fired—or quit, whatever—but in the dream it was all... different."The part of the dream that's clearest is the elevator ride down, the feeling of the ground under his feet as he walked out of the building. Heknowsthat didn't happen. He remembers. But he can't stop thinking about how it happened in the dream. "It was all different."





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I started watching the Tick cartoon from the 90's and realized that the new show has, like, a lot of references to the cartoon. I think it's pretty neat—I love lore and callbacks and things like that. So I wrote this.

_Arthur is dreaming._

_He's back at his old job. Back at Fishladder & Sons. He's sitting at a desk in an office, only it's not his desk and he's never seen this office before in his life. He's filling out a 1099-MISC form. He's wearing his supersuit. _

_"Arthur?"_

_His boss approaches his desk. Arthur looks up at him. He can't see the man's face. He has never been able to see faces in dreams, unless it's the Terror's face—or, more rarely, his father's._

_"Yes, Mr. Wheaterspan?" he says._

_"Arthur, ah, I'm afraid the firm feels that it's time to allow you the opportunity to pursue other avenues of employment."_

Oh, _Arthur thinks,_ that's what this is. _He's being fired again._

_"I'm fired?" he hears himself say. "Is there a problem with my work?"_

_"Oh no, Arthur, no," his boss says. He sounds almost sympathetic. "It's, it's, it's—it's that stupid bunny outfit!"_

_This isn't how it happened, but in the dream Arthur doesn't know that yet. In the dream this is perfectly normal._

_"Oh, no," Arthur says. "Not bunny, sir,_ moth _. It's my mothsuit. Actually, it's a flying suit. The wings are in my briefcase." He holds it up, as if to demonstrate._

_"Arthur, you're making the other accountants nervous," his boss says. "We all find this kind of rampant individuality very disturbing."_

_"I know you think I'm crazy, Mr. Wheaterspan," Arthur says, "but I'm not. It's just—ever since I found this suit—I've felt strange new needs. Urges. I can't live this life a moment longer. Somewhere out there a destiny of adventure and excitement waits for me!" He stands up. "Accounting is a fine skill to fall back on, but the road less traveled—_ much less traveled _—the mothsuit-and-wings road is a lot more exciting than taxes."_

_The dream shifts after that. Arthur is packing up his desk, only he can't remember what he needs to bring with him and he can't see the tiny typeface on the papers. He keeps packing and unpacking and packing and unpacking until he realizes that it doesn't matter. He leaves his first real, successful job with nothing but his briefcase and the flying suit he's already wearing._

_He takes the elevator down to the ground floor and walks out of the building._  

* * *

 The dream sticks with Arthur for the rest of the day. He remembers almost all of it, which is strange for a dream that's not a nightmare. The whole dream is strange. Arthur has stress dreams, and he has nightmares, but he almost never dreams about normal things like _getting fired_. He's been fired before—many times. He struggled to hold down a job throughout his early twenties. It's a fact of life at this point. He's never dreamt about it before.

He goes over to Dot's apartment in the evening, after patrol. The Tick is out with Overkill and Dangerboat, following up on a lead, probably driving Overkill crazy. Arthur is just happy to have some alone time with his sister.

"Congratulations on the job," he says. Dot works at a local gym-slash-dojo now, teaching self defense classes. It doesn't pay as well as being an EMT, but it's a job, and it leaves time for vigilante work. Dot grins.

"Thanks," she says. "What about you? How are you and Tick doing?"

"We're getting by. AEGIS actually has this stipend for, um, unemployed superheroes. People like Tick who can't maintain a secret identity." _People like me,_ he doesn't say. Arthur Everest would have been able to keep up a secret identity just fine if he hadn't ruined it for himself in a moment of panic.

"Good," Dot says. She leans back on the couch and takes a sip of her beer. She's been drinking more beer lately.

"Hey, Dot," Arthur says. He kneads his fingers against his own bottle of ginger ale. He isn't sure what he wants to say.

"Yeah?" Dot lifts her head.

"Do you ever have dreams?" He winces a little as soon as he says it. Everyone has _dreams_. "I mean, dreams about... things that have happened. Regular things."

"Yeah," Dot says. Now she sounds uncertain, too. "I have a lot of dreams, actually."

"I had this weird dream last night," Arthur says. "I was at my old accounting job..." He trails off, but Dot is looking at him with something like concern. He doesn't want her to worry. He's never wanted her to worry about him. "It was the day I got fired—or quit, whatever—but in the dream it was all... different. It was weird."

"Different how?"

"The building was different," Arthur says. "I was wearing my supersuit, at work, and..." He trails off again. The part of the dream that's clearest is the elevator ride down, the feeling of the ground under his feet as he walked out of the building. He _knows_ that didn't happen. He remembers. But he can't stop thinking about how it happened in the dream. "It was all different."

Dot doesn't answer for a minute. She sips at her drink and stares off into space, thinking. Arthur watches her.

"That is weird," she says, at last.

"Thanks," Arthur says.

"No, I mean, my dreams aren't like that," Dot says. "Mine are more like... memories. Everything the way it was."

"Well, you are the one with a superpower," Arthur says. He feels foolish. Of course his dream was different from reality. That's how dreams are. Dot is the one with the weird dreams and visions, the ability to see the future and maybe the past. Arthur is the normal sibling. He always has been. "It was probably just a dream."

"Yeah," Dot says, "Probably." She finishes her beer and sets it down on the coffee table. "You wanna watch _Seinfeld_?"

"Sure."

She turns on the TV and starts flipping channels. Arthur settles in next to his sister and does his best to forget about the dream.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> > _Arthur wakes up in his bed._   
> 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Overkill wasn't supposed to be in this story but he sneaked in anyway. Sage the Supernumerary will be in the final chapter.

_Arthur wakes up in his bed._

_Everything hurts. His muscles are sore and his bones ache like someone's been throwing him up against a wall. Maybe they have. It happens often enough in the superhero line of work. A bulletproof suit doesn't do much to stop the bruising._

_He hears a crash in the apartment. He sits up fast—a little too fast—and winces his way out of the bedroom, into the kitchen. He sees the Tick sitting at the kitchen table. A second later he sees the box labeled TOXIC CHEMICALS - DO NOT INGEST and the host of colorful glass beakers on the table._

_The Tick sees him standing in the doorway and grins. "Good morning, Arthur! Sleep well?"_

_Arthur groans at the pain in his back, his shoulders, and makes an exasperated gesture at the kitchen table. "What's all this?"_

_"This morning I went out and picked up some more equipment!" Tick says. He doesn't sound like himself. There's something off about the way he's talking. Arthur doesn't notice._

_"You_ what? _"_

_"I would've gotten more, but they... cut up your credit cards." The Tick at least has the decency to look a little ashamed about that. Arthur feels like he's choking._

_"My—you—" He's so angry. He can't remember the last time he felt this way. He doesn't even know why he feels like this, but he knows it's completely justified. He's so angry he could spit. He wants to hit something._

_The Tick looks momentarily worried, but seems to think he can fix it if he just explains himself. "Yes, but look what I got! A crime lab. Arthur, we've got a crime lab now! All kinds of crime chemicals! Look, I can make this red liquid turn totally clear—" The Tick grabs one beaker and pours it into another before Arthur can even move to stop him. The two liquids make an ominous hissing noise. Arthur has just enough time to flip up his helmet before the beaker explodes in a blinding flash and a shower of broken glass._

_The Tick is barely fazed. Arthur, on the other hand, has had enough._

_"Get out!" he screams. "Get out of my apartment!"_

_The Tick blinks. His expression, his whole body, shifts from interest to confusion in a millisecond. "What?"_

_"Get out of my apartment," Arthur says. "Get out of my life!"_

_He doesn't know where the Tick goes after that. Only the apartment is empty, and Arthur is alone, and no one is there to help when the Terror attacks._

* * *

"Tick!"

Arthur wakes up in his bed again, only this time it's real. He's panicking. He doesn't remember why he's so scared until he stumbles into the living room and finds the Tick there, watching the news and drinking coffee straight out of the carafe like always. "You're here," Arthur says, relieved.

The Tick's antennae twitch side to side as he looks back at Arthur. "Of course I'm here, chum," he says. "Where else would I be?"

"Nowhere. I don't know. I had this... terrible dream." Arthur wanders back into the kitchen and finds a mug of lukewarm coffee waiting for him by the sink. He sticks it in the microwave.

"A harbinger of horror?" The Tick follows him into the kitchen. "Tell me more."

"I—I don't know. I don't really remember it." That's a lie. Arthur remembers the dream very well, the way he would any nightmare. He just doesn't want to tell the Tick about it. He doesn't want to try and describe the kind of anger that would drive him to throw his best friend out of the apartment.

_It felt so real._ Arthur is familiar with bad dreams, nightmares, but he's never had one like this. He's never felt so _angry_ in a dream. He's felt scared, confused, even exhilarated....

"Well, don't let it bother you too much, chum," the Tick says. "We still have plenty of wrongs to right, crooks to collar, and evil to unmask!" He takes a long drink of coffee. Arthur glances past him at the TV. THIRD BANK HIT WITH STOLEN AEGIS WEAPONRY, the banner reads. Ms. Lint's gang is still active, and they seem to have distributed some of their stolen AEGIS tech to other criminal gangs to cover their tracks. It looks like the Tick and Arthur have a lot of work to do.

"Just let me take a shower," Arthur says.

The dream stays in his head long after the shower. It's there all through Arthur's hurried breakfast and the first hours of his patrol. The scene just keeps popping up, like a ghostly echo in his mind. A ghostly, distracting echo. Arthur almost flies into the side of a building a couple of times.

After the third near-miss he swoops up onto a rooftop and folds his wings in. "Hey, Tick? I think I need a—a break. So you—you go ahead. I'll stake out here, let you know if I, you know, see anything."

"Sounds like a plan, chum," the Tick says. "I'll survey the seas ahead. Shout if you see something!" He leaps away in a single bound, leaving Arthur on the rooftop alone.

Arthur stands there for a moment, watching his partner bounce from building to building. Then he sits down crosslegged at the edge of his roof and puts his head in his hands.

_"Get out of my apartment! Get out of my life!"_

Hasn't he wanted to say that before? Hasn't he wanted to push back on the Tick's constant, bludgeoning optimism? What stopped him doing it, from throwing the Tick out in the early days, before he fell headfirst into the superhero life?

_"Get out of my apartment! Get out of my life!"_

Chance, that's what. Or destiny, maybe. Arthur doesn't know. He slides his goggles back onto his helmet and rubs at his eyes. He needs to stop thinking about this. He's obsessing again, about a dream that doesn't mean anything and a relationship that's going as well as it can. He needs to stop thinking about this. He needs to get his mind back on track.

_"Get out of my apartment—get out of my life—"_

Arthur stands up. He flips his goggles down and blinks through the icons in the heads-up display. He lingers on the phone icon for a long time, thinking about it. He wants to talk to someone. He needs to talk to someone, probably, because it's been almost nine months since he stopped going to therapy. But Dot will be in the middle of one of her classes now, and his mother will only worry if he tells her about the dreams. Walter is out of the question. As much as Arthur's life has improved over the last couple of months, he still doesn't have that many friends.

"Hey, asshole."

Arthur startles. He flips his wings out and actually lifts off a few feet before he realizes what's happening. He lands and turns toward Overkill, who stands with his arms crossed at the edge of the roof. "You need to work on your situational awareness," Overkill says.

"Yeah, I think that's a lost cause." Arthur folds his wings in. Overkill stalks toward him. He's in full vigilante getup, skull mask and all. "What are you doing here?"

"Same thing you are. Staking out the block. Watching for criminals. Tracking them back to Ms. Lint's hideout."

"I'm not really doing any of that."

"Oh." Overkill looks away. He taps the side of his helmet a few times.

"I'm having kind of a weird day, actually," Arthur says.

"I don't want to talk about it," Overkill says.

"I had this dream," Arthur says. "I was—I was talking to the Tick, and I got—mad at him, so I kicked him out of the apartment—"

"I have better things to do," Overkill says.

"And I—I don't know. I was just so angry. In the dream. It didn't make sense, but it—it did. You know?"

Overkill just stares at him. Arthur looks away. He fiddles with his gauntlets. "Sorry," he says. "I should go." He walks to the edge of the roof and extends his wings again, ready to jump. It's about time he caught up with the Tick, anyway.

"I've had dreams like that," Overkill says.

Arthur looks back over his shoulder. "What?"

"Traumatic memories," Overkill says. "Warped by your own darkest impulses and spat out into your dreams. Happens to everyone. You claw your way out, eventually. Or you don't. But you will. You've been through a lot. The night is darkest just before the dawn. And I promise you, the dawn is coming."

Arthur frowns. "Is that—are you quoting _The Dark Knight_?"

Overkill blinks. "No. Shut up." He turns and walks to the edge of the roof. "Solve your own problems. I've got criminals to catch." He fires his grappling gun, and then he's gone.

Arthur sighs. _Stop thinking about it,_ he thinks. _Go find the Tick and get a lead on Ms. Lint's gang._ He extends his wings and takes a running leap off of the building, into the wind. He swoops away. _Traumatic memories._ He knows all about those. This seems like something different. He can't quite get his head around it, but he needs to, or it's going to drive him crazy all over again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Overkill accidentally quoting movies while trying to sound badass is an underrated bit.


	3. Chapter 3

_Dot is getting married._

_She wears a white dress and a white veil. The canopy is white, too, and covered in flowers. It's set up inside the community center Arthur hasn't seen since he was thirteen, and the groom is already standing underneath it, waiting. Arthur sits in the front row of chairs, next to his mother. He wears a yarmulke, and a tuxedo over his supersuit, which strikes him as a bit odd even in the dream. The Tick is wearing a tux over his suit, too. The Tick is also standing, next to the canopy, next to the dark-haired groom. The Tick is the best man._

The Tick is the best man?

_The audience stands. Arthur moves with them, and turns so he can see down the aisle, and there she stands. Dot is radiant. Her hair is loose under her veil. Black combat boots peek out from underneath her skirt. She looks so beautiful. She looks so happy._

_Dot turns her head. She looks at the man walking her down the aisle. Arthur looks, too, and he sees his father._

_His father is holding Dot's arm. He looks happy. He looks proud. He's_ alive _. He's here, at Dot's wedding. He's walking her down the aisle. They're passing Arthur, walking under the canopy. The rabbi is speaking. Arthur can't hear him._

_Arthur's father sits down next to him. He looks up at Dot, and the groom, and listens to the reading of the ketubah. Arthur can't pay attention. He can't stop looking at his father. He's on the edge of his seat, leaning forward, nervous, waiting for something to happen. Something always happens. His father always dies in his dreams._

"Dad," _Arthur tries to say, but he can't. He can't speak._ "Dad, you have to go. You have to run." _If he dies now, he'll ruin Dot's wedding._

_The rabbi places the glass on the ground. The groom—Dot's husband—gathers his breath, and breaks it under his foot._

_"Mazel tov!"_

_Dot kisses her husband. Someone in the crowd cheers. Everyone is laughing and celebrating and hugging each other. Dot grabs her husband's hand and pulls him back down the aisle, running away from the crowd so they can have their time alone. Arthur's parents embrace each other, laughing. Everyone is happy. Arthur watches them, outside of it all. He waits for it to end. He waits for the dream to shatter into blood and fear. He waits._

* * *

Arthur blinks. He takes off his glasses, rubs his eyes, and drags his hands the rest of the way down his face. He's been staring at the same paragraph of this arrest report for ten minutes, reading and re-reading it without parsing a single word. He replaces his glasses and runs a hand through his hair. He looks over at the refreshments bar on the other side of the room.

"How goes the paper, chum?" the Tick says.

"Not good," Arthur says. He stands up and makes his way across the room at an embarrasingly slow pace. He and Tick have been pounding the pavement for days. The stress is starting to work its way into Arthur's feet.

"Would a croissant help?"

"Maybe. I don't know." Arthur picks at the refreshment tray. He isn't hungry. He had breakfast this morning, and then he ate again when he and Tick first retired to the AEGIS lounge. He doesn't really want another croissant. He wants a nap. He wants to be able to sleep at night without waking up in a cold sweat.

The atmosphere bends backwards and then Sage the Supernumerary pops into view next to the bar. Arthur blinks and takes a step back, but he doesn't flinch. He's been working on that. Sage nods at him.

"Arthur. Tick."

"Hey, Sage," Arthur says.

"Hello, Nipple-man!" Tick says.

"Tick," Arthur says. He even sounds tired.

"You're still working that Ms. Lint case, right?" Sage says. He sits down on one of the couches and puts his feet up. "How's that going?"

"Not good," Arthur says. He hobbles back over to his table where the arrest records are spread out.

"Ms. Lint appears to have vanished into the ether. Not unlike her namesake," the Tick says. Sage nods.

Arthur picks up one of the reports. He reads half a page and retains none of it. As soon as he looks away the information is gone. He puts it down again. He glances over at the couches. The Tick is reading _Good Intentions_ again. He seems focused. Sage sits sideways on the couch, eating his croissant at a leisurely pace.

"Hey, Sage?" Arthur says. Sage glances at him. The Tick looks up from his book. "You can tell if things are haunted, right?"

"Yeah," Sage says.

"So, you could tell if a person was haunted?"

"You're not haunted."

Arthur frowns. "How do you know?"

Sage gives him an exasperated look. "Lots of people think they're haunted. Nine times out of ten they're wrong. You're not haunted."

"I thought you said everything is haunted," the Tick says. Arthur makes a gesture of agreement.

"Every _thing_ ," Sage says. "Not every _one_. You're not haunted."

"I've been having these dreams."

Arthur isn't sure why he says it. Maybe he's starting to get desperate. Maybe he just needs to talk to someone. Maybe he needs to go back to therapy. "They're not nightmares but I can't stop thinking about them. They're like... memories. Only, I know, I know they didn't happen. But I wake up, and I remember them, and I can't stop thinking about it."

The confession hangs in the air for a moment. Now that he's said it Arthur doesn't know what to do. He watches Sage for a few seconds.

"Arthur," the Tick says. He's the first one to speak, and he sounds worried. He almost sounds at a loss. "How long have these... dreams... been bothering you?"

"A few days. A week. I don't know."

The room's atmosphere twists again and then Sage is sitting in the chair across from Arthur. "Well, you're still not haunted," he says, "but that definitely sounds like some kind of extra-dimensional weirdness happening in your head." He holds out his hand. "Do I have permission to probe your mind?"

"Um," Arthur says. "Will it hurt?"

"No."

The Tick raises his eyebrows and makes a _well, you might as well try it_ expression. Arthur takes a deep breath. "Okay," he says. "Sure."

Sage nods and presses his fingers against Arthur's temple.

For a few seconds he doesn't feel anything. Then the pressure builds inside his skull like a time bomb. The room warps and blurs in his vision. Colors pulse behind his eyes. It feels like—it feels like—

He hears voices.

_you know me i'm the you you always wanted to be you're just riding out a little post-episode paranoia right on schedule just like last time remember but i'm still not doing the dishes and give up the element of surprise yes give that up i have a glow you cannot see i have a heart as big as the moon i can see the weather on pluto you think i can't see through that mask what are you wearing are you okay you have to call me back didn't you get my messages you can't deny the snazzy of that i have friends who are superheroes real superheroes and they're coming for me are you denying the snazzy of that and you got nothing you got nothing I CAN FLY_

Arthur blinks.

"Huh," Sage says.

The room is back to normal. The pressure in Arthur's head is gone. The voices are still echoing, though, and Arthur suddenly remembers the other question he should have asked before he agreed to any of this.

"Um," he says. "Sage?"

"Yeah?"

"Um, I have a question," Arthur says. "If a person were, uh, say... hypothetically... maybe... still taking antipsychotic medication, would, would, this mind-probing thing, uh, would it... counteract that? Those meds?"

He picks a spot on the wall and stares at it so he doesn't have to meet Sage's eyes. He can feel Sage, and the Tick, watching him, staring at him. The silent pause between the question and the answer seems to last forever.

"Nope," Sage says. Arthur looks at him, in surprise, and sees Sage staring back at him with a soft expression. "You heard voices," he says. Arthur nods. "Everyone hears those. Except for deaf people. They see things. Magic doesn't discriminate."

"Oh. Okay. That's good," Arthur says. The wave of relief lasts for about two seconds before the next crisis occurs to him. "Please don't tell AEGIS."

"What do I look like, a cop? Nah, man. It's all good." Sage leans back in his chair and crosses his arms. "You wanna hear about what's going on in your head?"

"Oh! Yes. Please."

"There's a lot happening in there, I gotta say," Sage says. "But it looks like you've made some kind of connection to the multiverse. You started seeing it in your dreams."

"The multiverse?" Arthur says.

"You've heard of it?"

"Uh, yeah, I guess," Arthur says. "For every possible physical event, a universe exists." He's talking with his hands again. He pushes them into his lap, trying to keep still. "There are multiple universes..."

"An infinite number," Sage says. "No human mind can comprehend them all. But some people can see a few. The things you could have done, or should have, or never will. You've seen them."

"Yeah, you could say that." The dreams are rushing back. They're at the forefront of Arthur's mind. _He takes the elevator down to the ground floor and walks out of the building. The apartment is empty, and Arthur is alone. Dot is getting married._ "So these dreams are... other universes."

"Exactly."

"And they're real?"

Sage raises his eyebrows. "Well, now that's tricky," he says. "Are you real?"

That is not a question Arthur is prepared to deal with. He pushes past it. "I saw a universe where my dad isn't dead."

Sage's face changes. For a moment he looks sad. Worried. "Man, you don't want to go down that rabbit hole," he says. "Let me tell you. Maybe it's real, but it's not our world. It's the multiverse."

Arthur reaches up under his glasses to rub at his eyes. On one hand, it's nice to know that he isn't going crazy, that his meds are still working. On the other hand, this entire situation is ridiculous.

"Wait," he says. "How is any of this happening? I'm not a Category, or anything like that. They tested me. I'm normal."

Sage laughs. The grief is gone from his face. He looks as cool and self-assured as ever. "Man, you don't have to be a Category to see through the multiverse. You just gotta be interesting."

"Arthur is interesting," Tick says. His antennae perk up as Arthur looks over at him. "The multiverse is on the right train of thought there."

"Thanks, Tick," Arthur says. "And... thank you, Sage."

"No problem," Sage says. "Let me know if you keep having problems. The multiverse can really mess with your head."

"Yeah. That's for sure," Arthur says. He looks down at the arrest reports in front of him. He sees a name he recognizes, a name he's read on many arrest records before. "Hey... Tick?"

"Yes?"

"I—I think we have a lead." Arthur gathers the papers together and stands up from the table. His feet still hurt and he pitches sideways as he turns around, but he powers through it. "We've gotta go."

"Where are we going?" the Tick says, already on his feet.

"The warehouse district," Arthur says, and just like that, they're off.

* * *

_Arthur first sees the Tick as he's in the process of falling off of a skyscraper._

_The seven-foot man in the blue costume is clearly a superhero, but Arthur can't help being scared for him anyway. He sees the Tick try to grab a flagpole to stop himself. He sees the flagpole snap in half. The Tick keeps falling._

I've seen this before, _Arthur thinks, only he's never seen this superhero before in his life. The Tick lands feet-first on the street, directly in front of Arthur, and plunges straight into the asphalt up to his waist._

_"Gravity is a harsh mistress," he says, mostly to himself._

_"Are you alright?" Arthur says._

_"I'm fine," the Tick says. "I'm a superhero. I'm nigh invulnerable. I'm built for this kind of thing." He looks at Arthur again, really seeing him this time. "Nice outfit."_

_Arthur is wearing his moth suit, same as always. He stares at the Tick, wide-eyed. "A superhero?" he says._

_The Tick leaps to his feet. "Known to evildoers everywhere as the Tick!" he declares._

_"I'm Arthur." They shake hands. "Known to taxpayers everywhere as—the accountant. I'm looking for adventure."_

_"Come have lunch with me, Arthur," the Tick says. "Adventure will follow."_

_They walk off together, down the street. This all feels familiar, Arthur thinks, though he can't place how or why. He doesn't mind it. He walks next to the Tick, through the city he's lived in all his life, and he thinks,_ I could get used to this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who read this. I had a lot of fun writing it. It might be cool to expand this someday, maybe write a story about Arthur and the Tick meeting their alternate-universe selves, but for now I wanted to keep it short. Here's hoping for season 3.

**Author's Note:**

> I like to think that Dot is a [retrocognitive dreamer](https://powerlisting.fandom.com/wiki/Retrocognitive_Dreaming) in addition to her more obvious powers.


End file.
